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A Thread of A Series of Books of A Song of Ice and Fire (BOOK AND TV SPOILERS HERE)
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It's not even that he's a follower, it's just they were about to burn to death so he was like, "lol, stole 3 deaths from the fire god, gotta right the balance"
If they had been saved from a shipwreck it woulda been the drowned god, or whatever other gods are appropriate for that particular type of death. Doesn't mean he's a *follower*.
(Also even if "Jaqen" follows the red god, that's just his cover identity anyway, sooo)
If they're going to fade to black on Theon and bring him back as Reek there were a few things they needed to establish that we only got from his inner monologue.
-His fear of Ramsay is all consuming and why that is: Pretty apparent.
-A flayed digit is a mother-fucker, and you'd beg to have it cut off: Understood.
-He's been gelded after being terrorized with his own sexual desires: No more sex for Theon "I tried to fuck my own sister" Greyjoy, got it.
-What his name isn't (I suspect this will be the main thrust of future scenes)
We need to know these things to understand why Theon is trying to be Reek; so I think these are the things show people need to know when they meet him.
Did anyone not know that new-Reek was Theon almost instantly in the books?
Yeah, like the whole Arstan the Bold thing they did. Those kinds of surprises work super well in a visual medium, especially nowadays with the audience having access to the newest on-set photos and casting information on their 24/7 Internet connections.
How much emphasis do you think viewers need? Porting this over because I think it becomes tricky to talk about in a non-book context.
Like I know exactly why they're doing what they're doing. It's still bad TV and I just skipped passed it this week. First time I've done it in this series.
You didn't even watch the fucking scene and you talk shit about it?
I watched it late at night due to hockey so had already read the thread(s). And I suppose the most accurate thing to say was I read Sepinwall's review while it was on in the background.
Oh my fucking god.
Sorry, those scenes are bad. And they're turning off non-readers.
More than we've gotten in some ways. I mean, if you think about it, this week's Theon bit does in one episode what took the start of the season like 4. The stuff in the last few episodes I'd say is probably MORE necessary. It's emphasizing the sheer brutality of what Theon is enduring, both mentally and physically. It's important that the audience sees his torture as disfiguring and unrelenting and permanent. That's how you get them to believe in Theon-as-Reek and to not really except Theon to come back.
At this point, it really seems like Theon calling himself Reek is gonna be the big ending for his storyline this season and they need to emphasize both the mind-fuckery and the crippling torture to sell that as him being fully broken, in the same way the defenestration sells Jaime as a villain at the start of S1.
If anything, I think it's the earlier shit that went on too long. (or maybe the middle shit since the first few episodes work because you don't really expect it to all be a trick) The truly gruesome torture and the paranoia-inducing games are the important bits. You need "chop his cock off" level torture to really get across that this ain't 24.
Well, since you so desire new things, that's the scene where Ramsay cut Theon's dick off. Y'know, the moment that completely breaks Theon and enables his transition into Reek. One might say it's a character defining moment.
But hey. You didn't watch it because some people said it's a bad scene, so I'm sure you know best.
I thought this last Theon scene was actually awfully well directed though. It was the opposite of torture porn if anything, there's two very hot nekkid ladies on the screen and it's not arousing at all, it's downright tense and awful - for Theon's sake, not the ladies.
Really? Because just a hop and skip over there, and the only person I see complaining about how awful the scenes are is you.
We get it, you don't enjoy the scenes and feel it's bad TV. You're entitled to your opinion. But don't make a statement like "they're turning off non-readers" when I know plenty of non-readers in real life, and can hop n' skip over to a numbers of message boards, and that's not the general consensus I'm seeing. Overall, yes, there's bound to be people who don't like it, whether they personally feel it's bad TV or if they're just squeamish over how brutal Ramsay is.
But the thing is, is as someone who has read the books we do know it's going somewhere: it's the process of brutality that lead to Theon becoming Reek (one of the most pivotal steps in Theon's character development), and knowing that? I can't help but feel its necessary. As I've said before we have no internal dialogue, and having Theon just pop up a few seasons later and go "Yeah, I got tortured a whole bunch," completely lacks any impact. The only reason we could do that with the books is because we got that internal dialogue, and as a book we can get the mental image of what Theon endured. And if the show did flashbacks, perhaps they could go with that direction, but the show tends to avoid those (and it'd still require those scenes, now crammed into what I'm going to suspect will be two, maybe three seasons to cover both AFFC and ADWD).
Either way, we get the scenes, and if we didn't then THAT would be bad television. One of the worst things a TV show can do is tell you something that happened and then not show it (like Adam Monroe fighting all the samurai in Heroes... and like 90% of every post-season one episode of Heroes).
I'm sorry you think it's that terrible of TV, but I have to disagree. It's not great TV, but for Theon to have the impact on the viewers as he did on the readers, I think it's absolutely necessary. Oh, and it establishes Ramsay, as they didn't have time to do that in Season Two. If someone can tell me how else they could've done both better, I'm all ears (or eyes, given that this is the interwebs).
also Rose Leslie (I'll miss her) imitating Jon Snow continues to be hilarious and the dragons continue to be very well done. and Tywin rules but then again we already knew that.
*cry*
Sure, Theon's scenes aren't as good as as Varys, Tyrion, and The Box or Locke giving Jamie a handjob, but they're still extremely important for understanding what is going on in Theon's arc for later. If we didn't see them, we (and especially show-only people) would feel cheated.
In any case, each of the Theon torture scenes has had a different spin to it. They're constructing and deconstructing our expectations when someone gets captured and tortured in most shows. One scene established the torture as a thing. Another gave false hope of escape, a third gave important details to torturer (more about what he's not than what he is), and this one was the one that said that, no, Theon is not going to get out of this relatively unscathed. Before this, Yara could've busted in, untied Theon, and sailed off with him, and he very well could've been back to his petulant, entitled ways by the end of the season. No longer. At this point, he simply can't go back to what he was. What he does become is now up to him to decide.
On a different track, all the letter writing this season is going to be brilliant in hindsight. Varys even told us flat-out that the content of a man's letters is more valuable than the contents of his purse.
Whoever said we are going to get a final vague "Theon might be dead...or not" scene probably nailed it as that leads nicely into a shocking Season 4 reveal of Reek (and allows that actor to really transform himself physically if he wants in the period before shooting begins)
You just don't like them. They are not bad. That is incorrect. They show us important things to know for the future. These are facts. Stop being so wrong. Just stop.
Those are Ramsay's scenes, each one adds on to and further develops the fucked up-ness of Ramsay.
The escape showed he was all too willing to play with his captives, really enjoys a hunt, knows Bran and Rickon are alive, and he doesn't give a shit about the lives of his soldiers if it involves his playtime.
Next one showed that he was willing to get into the torture himself, and that he's shown enjoying torture more than any character has been shown enjoying anything (even sex!) in the series.
Third one showed that he does. not. get tired with an individual person. I can easily see Joffrey doing any one the tortures Ramsay did (although Joff wouldn't actually -be- the one doing them), but after that first one Joff or any of the others would just execute the captive and move on to someone else.
Ramsay keeps his toys.
Theon's scenes are not about Theon, and I think the huge reveal when it's shown that hey, Ramsay is actually a major character we'll be keeping around, it will change so many opinions about the "Theon" scenes.
There's no way you can tell a professional actor to sit on their hands for 2 years and expect them to actually come back for later seasons. if they did that they'd be recasting Theon down the line.
There's never enough naked chicks.
The bolded is huge. By now I'd hope all the show watchers know that this show doesn't guarantee happy endings, but for any given character there's always still hope. Until there isn't. This episode is the one where we find out there isn't. It's not a sudden Beaning, so it lacks that same amount of punch, but this is the episode where Theon (as we know him) dies.
None of the show watchers I know have even figured out that it's Bolton's kid. So yeah, as a viewer I'd be a little confused, and it's understandable that they might not realize who's being developed. The guy, at this point, has no name.
But he's got a vuvuzela. Of course Ramsay fucking Bolton would have a fucking vuvuzela.
Can you pay him a retainer, perhaps, and get him on contract? I feel like at a certain point the show would benefit from not having him on screen, so the transition is more pronounced when he comes back. To the extent that, if necessary, it would be worth paying him not to appear. I don't want to see the slow transition to Reek. That would, I think, be awful TV. I think what we've set up here, where we see the brutal beginning of his transition, is awesome. But then I think it'd be best if he disappears for upwards of a season, maybe even longer, and comes back fully formed into Reek.
Honestly, and I love Alfie Allen to death in the show, it wouldn't be crazy talk to actually recast Reek, for further transition. Though maybe I'm nuts. But if you really want to sell the "Theon is dead, Reek is all that's left" bit, throw a different (though vaguely similar-looking) actor into the role. Hell, you could probably confuse TV viewers for an episode or two before they figure out what's up, making it a fun reveal.
You'd think so but nope. There are an amazing amount of optimistic watchers in the tv thread. Some are slowly coming around, though.
Er, I wrote that, not So It Goes.
Anyways, I linked it in the show thread, but I hadn't realized just how appropriate Henry Rollins's "Liar" is to the Ramsay/Theon relationship until now.
He's such a brat!
If they play their cards well and get the right people on the job, they could even earn a nomination for an Academy award in makeup or some shit.
I think this is fair, but relies on book knowledge. For a lot of people who haven't read the books, it's not enjoyable.
Sepinwall (and his commenters) has been railing against it all year, for example. Or Andy Greenwald at Grantland (who sometimes misses the point generally, but it's an interesting perspective of how the show has gone mainstream). The AV Club newbie review just throws in an afterthought at the end of this week's review about how it's boring and confusing, most of the commenters there seem to agree. TWOP forums are the same. SA is in one of its periodic no account lockdowns so I can't check their newbie thread.
I try to judge the show as a TV show first. I think mcdermott was the one who was talking about the Harry Potter movies and how most of them don't really work if you haven't read the books. I'm basically with him on that, though I think most of this series does a better job of it than he does.
Ian McElhinney sat out one. It's totally doable. Especially if you can promise them a major role when they come back like Alfie will be getting.
It really worked so much better in the books. You don't hear from Theon or Ramsay for 2 books and then all the sudden we see Theon-as-Reek with half his teeth and fingers missing, biting into a live rat. What more needs to be shown?
I agree. Give him a break this season and half of the next one, then drop us in on a scene of that, leaving the viewers think "Is that... is that Theon?". Though I do think his scenes this season work as developing Ramsay as a character, since the show doesn't have time to give monologues later of all the terrible things he did and it just wouldn't be as effective anyway.
This is a TV show, not a book. If they did what you just suggested, 100% the TV viewers would be like "What the fuck, you just dropped Theon and didn't show us the character development that led to this!?" Then they'd have to do an exposition scene where they tell you that Ramsay mentally and physically destroyed who Theon was and now this is what he is.
Or, you could just do what the TV show is actually doing, and actually have the character development shown to the audience.
When you're reading a book, and you read about terrible things Ramsay has done, you are mentally creating images of what that looks like to you. In a TV show, the audience expects you to show them what's happening. These scenes are replacing the exposition from the books where it's described how Ramsay did horrible things in the past, and they're showing Theon be broken.
The main comparison that's coming to my mind is Tobias Beecher from Oz. A big part of that show was the transformation that happened to him after he went to prison. If they just took the character out of the show and reintroduced him later, and had somebody say "Did you hear, after he got here he got raped a bunch, fucked with the white supremacists, one of his kids got murdered, he fell in love with a guy who ended up on death row, etc." it would've had basically no impact compared to watching those developments happen to the character, even if some of it was uncomfortable to watch.